Cable television systems are now in operation that provide for selective viewing of specific programs by their customers. For example, some present systems provide their customers the ability to view requested movies by transmitting such movies to such customers over dedicated channels and permitting the customers to control the showing of such movies in a manner similar to the control of a conventional video disc or cassette player. However, at present such systems typically require manual or automatic loading of a video disc or tape cartridge containing the desired movie in a player at a centralized location. The customer operates the player remotely. However, such a system becomes impractical for large numbers of customers because of the large number of players needed, the large numbers of tape cartridges and/or discs (including duplicates) necessary to satisfy customer requests and the physical problems associated with transporting the right cartridge or disc to a given player when needed.
Other interactive cable television services have been proposed in which specific programs are created from various video and/or audio segments combined sequentially or simultaneously. Such segments must be stored and made retrievable in such a way that the system creating such programs can control the sending of such segments in the appropriate combinations at the appropriate times.
What is needed is a facility for storing large numbers of data blocks of various sizes that can be retrieved and sent to customers as necessary to provide the proposed interactive services.